Mchenry Must Move On Flood Plan

June 27, 1996

DuPage County is spending some $60 million to convert an old stone quarry in Elmhurst into a flood-control reservoir. It is the largest but by no means the only such project in the county, as it mops up after years of unchecked development and poor planning along flood-prone Salt Creek and other waterways.

There is an object lesson in this for McHenry County, on the brink at last of adopting its first countywide stormwater ordinance: Plan and pay what you must now to minimize future flood hazards, or you'll wind up paying a lot more later.

The process has been a long and overdue one for the county, dating back almost five years--not unlike the tortured process in DuPage that in 1991 produced one of the strongest flood-control plans in the Midwest. Unlike DuPage, which agonized over its final draft, the McHenry County Board should waste no time getting its law on the books and enforced before continued development in the state's fastest-growing county complicates the effort.

Wisely, the county has been coordinating its work with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, which wrote the book on model flood-plain ordinances for the region.

Critical to any such plan is consistency within a watershed--setting a countywide standard for all municipalities to eliminate the current problem of each going its own way, perhaps solving the local problems but dumping the runoff on someone else downstream. Municipalities can be free to set their own standards, as they are in DuPage, so long as they conform to the county plan and are at least as strict.

The goal--while at the same time dealing separately with existing flooding problems--is to regulate development in flood plains so that no new flooding occurs. This can mean forbidding development altogether or restricting its size and location. It certainly should mean requiring developers to retain the stormwater they create on-site in detention ponds.

The county also must look to preserve existing wetlands and greenways in flood plains or create new ones; they are effective sponges and attractive as well.

As an incentive, it should keep in mind another figure: When torrential rains hit DuPage County in 1987, the resulting floods caused $40 million in damage and untold grief for home and business owners.